


Upstairs

by Celia_and



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Attempted Seduction, Ben is going to change that, Breakfast in Bed, Communication, Cowgirl Position, Did I mention angst, Enthusiastic Consent, Eventual Romance, Eventual Smut, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Falling In Love, Feelings Realization, Fluff, Food as Love Language, Happy Ending, Happy Sex, Landlord/tenant relationship, Lingerie, Masturbation, Missionary Position, Naked Cuddling, Pining, Praise Kink, Rey doesn't know how to let people do things for her, Sexual Tension, Smut, Two lonely babies finding each other, Vaginal Fingering, Vaginal Sex, Virgin Ben Solo, While also constantly cock-blocking himself in the process
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-18
Updated: 2020-05-15
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:13:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 20,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23194531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Celia_and/pseuds/Celia_and
Summary: Her palm is warm against his, and when he looks down he sees how easily his big hand engulfs her smaller one. He looks up, and she’s looking back at him with a mischievous smile still playing about the corner of her lips.He either just made the best decision or the biggest mistake of his life. He wishes he knew which.----------Ben agrees to rent out his basement in exchange for sex.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 815
Kudos: 1985
Collections: Reylo Prompt Fills (@reylo_prompts)





	1. Hopeful

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jeeno2](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jeeno2/gifts).



> For the incomparable Jeeno, who asked for a "landlord/tenant to lovers" fic and who should always get everything she asks for. 🙌
> 
> These two gorgeous moodboards are courtesy of [dashalle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dashalle) and [@trantmadison](https://twitter.com/trantmadison), respectively. Y'all are simply the sweetest! 💛

He’s feeling particularly sorry for himself, or maybe just generally sad or slightly tipsy on scotch, when he posts the listing online: _One-bedroom basement apartment in Tenleytown. Full kitchen. Private entrance. Rent negotiable._

He rinses and recycles the plastic container that held his microwave lasagna dinner. Hand-washes the glass and the single fork and knife, because it doesn’t make sense to load a dishwasher with just those three things. He removes last night’s glass and fork and knife from the drying rack and puts them away, so tonight’s can take their place. One glass. One fork. One knife.

One house, too, with four bedrooms. Three bathrooms. Two kitchens. And one Ben.

By the next morning he no longer feels sorry or sad or tipsy—whatever it was. He feels like himself: a person who lives alone because he’s independent and he likes it that way. He opens his laptop and deletes the listing. As he’s waiting for his coffee to brew he leans against the counter and scans his email inbox. A dozen or so inquiries came in about the apartment, which isn’t surprising. It’s a desirable neighborhood, and a private entrance and full kitchen are relative rarities. The only reason he didn’t get more responses is probably the “Rent negotiable” part. Though he’s by no means a real estate expert, Ben imagines that that’s probably code for “so expensive I don’t want to put it in the online listing,” and a lot of the renters in the area are students.

He pours the coffee into his insulated thermos to take to work, then sets to cleaning out his inbox. Most of them have the same subject line, or a close variation: _Basement apartment. Apartment to rent. APARTMENT._ He’s not sure why that particular prospective renter would think he’d appreciate being yelled at.

There’s one email buried among the rest that he doesn’t even think is in response to the rental listing; maybe he needs to tinker with his spam filter. The subject is: _I’m the one you’ve been waiting for._

He’s about to send it to Trash with the rest, but something makes him decide to open it. It isn’t spam after all.

> I think you should let me live in your apartment. Not your apartment, I mean, your basement. That sounds creepy. Full disclosure I may be a little drunk, but I’m not usually. I’m a Responsible Person. The only reason I decided to get drunk is that my roommate is moving in with his girlfriend, which sounds fine when you say it like that all casual _my roommate is moving in with his girlfriend,_ like that’s a normal thing that happens to people, right? They meet people and fall in love with them and move in together. And maybe they had someone who was their person before but she’s not anymore because now they have someone new who’s their person. But I don’t think you probably care about that. You just want to find a good renter who can pay whatever ridiculous amount of rent you want for your fancy full kitchen basement. I can’t. I can pay $500 a month because I’m a year out of college and I work for a tiny nonprofit and that’s how much I have left after paying for the bus and buying food and tampons. So that’s why I’ll never find somewhere to live and I’ll be homeless. And it’s all Finn’s fault for falling in love.
> 
> I’m really not an awful person, I promise. I’m genuinely happy for him. It just hurts, you know?

Ben _doesn’t_ know. He doesn’t know what it feels like to have a “person” in the way that this Finn was for the drunken emailer. But for some reason the message makes him think that that’s something he could want.

He looks up at the sender’s name: Rey Niima. He thinks it’s probably a woman—the style of the writing _feels_ like a woman. Ben can practically picture her. He can only imagine how articulate she would be in real life, when she’s not drunk, if this is the kind of perfectly-spelled email she can write when she is.

For the first time since he posted the listing, he thinks seriously about what it would actually be like to have someone living in the basement apartment. To double the number of people in the house. But no, not someone— _her_. Because you can’t just send this email and expect the recipient not to want to meet you.

He doesn’t need the rent money. The mortgage was paid off a generation ago, and he earns enough to comfortably cover the taxes and upkeep. If he were to actually rent the basement, it would be so this particular woman would have a place to live. And so he could meet her. So she could maybe tell him what it’s like to have a “person.” This conclusion still doesn’t answer the question of why he posted the listing in the first place, but that’s a question for another day.

He mulls it over as he walks to Metro. It’s new. This is all new. Being intrigued. Being excited. Because he _is_ excited, so much so that once he gets to the office he can’t even get a half hour of work done before he takes his phone to the bathroom with him and types out a reply.

> Dear Rey,
> 
> I’m interested in renting the apartment to you. Please let me know what you would like to know about it to make your decision.

He hesitates when it comes to the closing. “Sincerely” seems too formal. “Best” feels...wrong. He finally just settles on his name, and then adds his phone number as an afterthought. It’s surprisingly easy to hit “Send.”

He checks his email five minutes later. And then another five minutes later. And then he goes a whole hour before checking it next because he has a supremely inconvenient meeting in which he can’t unobtrusively check his phone, but even when it’s finally over and he whips it out, there’s still no reply.

Ben makes sure the ringer is turned on so he’ll hear a call if it comes, but it doesn’t. After lunch, which he chokes down without appetite, he resolves to leave his phone on the filing cabinet in the corner of his office so he can’t check it without getting up. It helps a little: that afternoon he averages about twenty minutes between checks. By the time the workday finishes he’s pretty sure his blood pressure is elevated, for no good reason except that he wants her to _call_. Or email. Or text. Any of those things would be perfectly fine. Is it really too much to ask?

His usual post-work visit to the gym helps get out some of the nervous energy, and by the time he gets home and gets in the shower he’s reasoned himself into the conclusion that if she hasn’t emailed or called by now, she’s not going to. Maybe she found a better offer. Maybe her current landlord took pity and lowered her rent so she can afford it alone. Maybe Finn found out that his girlfriend is actually his long-lost second cousin and they broke up and he’s not moving out after all. There are all sorts of possibilities, he tells himself, stepping out of the shower. She isn’t going to call, but it’s fine. He towels himself dry. He can just go on like he has been, which is probably for the best. He secures the towel around his hips. Everything is fine.

The phone rings, and he slips on the bathmat and bangs his shin against the corner of the vanity in his scramble to pick it up.

“Hello?” he answers in a strangled squawk, trying not to let his voice betray the tears that are gathering in his eyes at the sharp pain in his shin. He glances down. It’s bleeding. _Shit._ His towel is already mostly falling down, so he wads it up and presses it to his leg. He’s left in kind of a half-crouch, naked, holding his phone with one hand and the towel with the other. In front of the bathroom mirror.

“Hello? Is this Ben?” a voice comes. _Her_ voice. She has a British accent.

“Yes, this is Ben.” He tries to remember what his voice sounds like when he’s not at an eight on the pain scale and mimics that as much as possible.

“This is Rey, I emailed you about renting your basement apartment.”

“Yes, Rey. Yes. Of course. I remember.” He winces as he props his foot up on the toilet lid so at least he can stand most of the way up while stanching the blood. The new pose makes it look like he’s admiring his dick in the mirror.

He must not be doing a very good job of hiding the strain in his voice, because she asks somewhat hesitantly, “Is this not a good time?”

“No, this is a perfect time. Rey. My basement apartment. Yes.”

“Okay, well, first of all I wanted to apologize for sending that email while drunk. I...” she hesitates. “I was surprised you got back to me, I’m sure you had responses from people who didn’t overshare about their lives with a stranger.”

The first sharp stab of pain has subsided somewhat to more of a bone-deep throb that’s easier to handle. “I had decided not to rent it at all, actually, before I saw your message.”

“Oh, so it’s not for rent?” He can hear the disappointment hidden under politeness.

“No, no, it is. To you, I mean. If you want it.”

“I...listen, Ben, I’m going to be straight with you. I wrote that email drunk, but everything in it is true. I can only pay five hundred a month. I’m pretty sure that even if your private-entrance basement with a full kitchen has exposed wiring and is actively flooding, you could still get at least eight.” Her voice does inconvenient things to him. His dick twitches as he watches in the mirror, helpless to do anything. Literally the only thing going right for him right now is the fact that the blood hasn’t seeped through the towel.

“The money doesn’t matter, I’ve never rented it out before and I’ve always been fine. I just want to...help you.”

“To help...me?” she asks. “Why?” It stings—not his shin (well, yes, also his shin), but the incredulous surprise in her voice.

“You shouldn’t have to be homeless,” he answers gruffly. “Just because your roommate is moving out.”

“I don’t get it. Is this some kind of nonprofit? Renting rooms as a charitable enterprise?”

“No, I’m just a...person,” he responds lamely.

He can _hear_ the smile in her voice as she answers, “Okay, Ben. I’m glad you’re a person. Do you want to...maybe meet up and talk about it?”

“Yes,” he answers quickly. “When do you want to come over?”

“Well, maybe we could meet in Dupont Circle, by the fountain? If that works?”

 _Ooohh,_ he realizes. _Of course. She doesn’t want to come over, because I’m being a creep._ “That’s completely fine. Whatever works for you.”

“How’s tomorrow evening? Maybe at six?”

“Perfect,” he replies immediately. “Six o’clock at Dupont Circle. I’ll see you there.”

“Okay. Good. Oh, Ben?”

“Yeah?”

“What do you look like? So I’ll recognize you?”

“I’m...” he glances at himself in the mirror. His cock is flaccid again. His hair is plastered to his forehead, and he realizes that he somehow got a square of toilet paper stuck to his thigh. “...tall. I’m tall.”

“Great,” she smiles. “I’ll be the brunette wearing a green dress and looking hopeful.”

“Rey,” he starts, but doesn’t know what he wants to say. “I...look forward to meeting you.”

“I look forward to meeting you too.”

He hesitates a second before saying, “Have a good evening, Rey.”

“You too. Bye.”

She hangs up before he can say anything back. He sets his phone down by the sink, discards the toilet paper on his thigh, and gingerly peels off the towel to inspect his wound. It doesn’t look serious enough to prevent his being at Dupont Circle at six tomorrow, which is really the only thing that matters. By the time he’s washed the gash and closed it up with a few old Band-aids from the medicine cabinet, the pain is down to about a two. He suspects that if not for the call it would be more like a five.

 _Tomorrow,_ his brain keeps repeating. _Tomorrow._

* * *

He gets to Dupont Circle at 5:38, having left work early to make sure no mishaps would prevent his arriving on time. Instead of packing his gym bag that morning, he’d gotten up early to photograph the apartment to show her. It looked its best in the morning light. He’d also spent a few extra minutes shaving especially carefully and going through his closet to pick the shirt that he decided said “creep” the least. Light blue is non-threatening, he hopes.

Ben sits down to wait on one of the benches near the fountain. He looks down at his phone every couple minutes, partly to check the time but partly because he fears that something will happen and she’ll have to cancel or postpone. Finn’s girlfriend could still turn out to be his cousin.

It’s 5:57 before he realizes that Rey won’t easily be able to tell that he’s tall if he’s sitting down when she arrives. He stands hurriedly, and as he does he sees her across the fountain. Brown hair. Green sundress. Hopeful. But he thinks he still would’ve recognized her without knowing any of that.

He sees her before she sees him, so he has a minute to just watch her as she makes her way around the fountain’s perimeter, subtly eyeing tall men as she goes. Her gaze finally finds him, and she raises her eyebrows in an unspoken question. He smiles, because he can’t help it, but realizes that’s not necessarily an answer. “Rey,” he says, though she’s too far away to hear him yet, but she must be able to read his lips because she smiles back. He meets her halfway, acutely aware of how big and awkward his feet suddenly seem to be. And his hands. He tries putting them in his pants pockets, but no, that’s worse. By the time he gets to her he’s pretty sure he’s already screwed this up, but for some reason she’s still smiling. Still hopeful.

“Ben?” she asks, and it’s one thing to hear her voice over the phone but another entirely to hear it from _her_.

“Yes, I’m Ben.” He wipes his palms on the sides of his thighs.

“I’m Rey.”

“Hi Rey, I’m Ben.”

Her smile grows wider. “Yeah, Ben, got it. Nice to meet you.”

“You too.”

“Do you want to sit down, maybe?”

He follows her automatically to the nearest bench and takes a seat next to her. Her sundress rides up a little as she sits, showing more of her legs. He swallows and looks up at her. _Shit,_ she saw him look at her thighs. But wonder of wonders: she’s still smiling.

“So, Ben, what do you do?” Her mouth curves ironically as she says it, like she’s inviting him to share in the joke of breaking the ice with the stereotypically quintessential DC question.

But it’s good, this he can do. “I’m in pharmaceutical research. What about you?”

“I coordinate mentoring programs for middle schoolers.”

Okay, maybe it’s _not_ good; now he looks like an asshole by comparison. “Wow, that’s amazing, Rey.”

She gives him another smile. “It is. I love everything about it. Except the whole making basically no money thing.”

“Oh! Of course. I meant what I said, before, about not needing rent.”

“Wait, what?!”

He wracks his brain trying to remember: why is this news to her? “I told you I didn’t need any rent.”

“No,” she protests vehemently, “you most certainly did _not_. I think you said something like ‘The amount doesn’t matter,’ so it’s okay that I pay $500.”

“Rey, I’m not going to make you pay that, you should have enough money to buy things other than food and...personal essentials,” he concludes, blushing.

She laughs, and her laughter is music. “You’re allowed to say tampons, Ben. But I’m not going to live in your apartment without paying _any_ rent, that’s insane.”

“Okay,” he relents. “How much do you want to pay?”

“Five hundred,” she shoots back.

He exhales in exasperation. “Rey, I want to make things _easier_ for you. Not take all your money.”

 _“Ben,_ I want to pay you properly. Five hundred already isn’t enough, I’m not going to pay _less_ than that.”

“You haven’t even seen the apartment,” he counters. “Maybe it’s not worth that much.”

“Wait, is there actually exposed wiring? Because I’m pretty handy, so I can help with repairs...”

“No, Rey. I wouldn’t want you to live somewhere that’s not safe.”

She’s looking at him with an expression he can’t decipher. “Fine. Do I get to see it or what?”

“Oh! Of course.” He pulls out his phone and opens the Photos app. “You can come over in person anytime, but here are some pictures I took this morning.” He hands her the phone and watches her as she studies the first one.

“Is it okay...” she makes a gesture he can’t decipher.

“What?”

“Is it okay if I swipe?”

“Swipe? _Oh._ Yeah, of course, I don’t have anything there that you can’t see. I mean...” She’s already swiping and he’s considering how to try to make this better when she cuts in.

“No photos for your girlfriend?” She swipes nonchalantly, not looking up.

“No, nothing like that.” He can feel his face heat. “I’m single.”

She hums thoughtfully and swipes to the next photo. She seems to be thinking about something other than the leather barstools in the kitchen and the generous bay window that looks out onto the backyard. Finally she gets to the last picture and hands the phone back to him.

“That’s a really nice basement you have, Ben.”

“Thank you?”

“You could definitely get a lot more than $500 from someone.”

“I _told_ you, I don’t want to rent it to someone, I want to rent it to _you._ ”

She studies his face carefully for a minute and seems to arrive at some decision. “Okay.”

“Okay? You’ll live there?”

“With one condition.”

“Great!” he exclaims, relieved. “What is it?”

“That you let me compensate you properly.”

“Rey, I told you, I don’t need the money...”

“No,” she interrupts. “Not with money.” She’s looking at him steadily like she’s trying to will him to understand something he’s not getting.

“Not with money?” He’s still lost.

“With sex,” she says, casually. “If you want.” At least that’s what he _thinks_ she says. It’s a little hard to hear through the sudden rushing noise that fills his ears.

“Sex?” he asks, dazed.

“Only if you want to,” she hastens to reassure him.

“I do,” he answers before thinking. “Want to.”

She smiles again, and this time her smile is different. It spreads slowly, and with a kind of silent promise. She holds out her hand for him to shake, and he takes it without speaking. Her palm is warm against his, and when he looks down he sees how easily his big hand engulfs her smaller one. He looks up, and she’s looking back at him with a mischievous smile still playing about the corner of her lips.

He either just made the best decision or the biggest mistake of his life. He wishes he knew which.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Buckle up, my darlings! I'm estimating a total of four or five chapters. I hope you enjoy the ride! 🤗


	2. Sweaty

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Moodboards by: [dashalle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dashalle) and [@trantmadison](https://twitter.com/trantmadison) 💛

By midnight, he’s decided definitively: it was a mistake. It was a titanic, colossal, oh-God-what-were-you-thinking mistake, and his only defense for his lapse in judgment was her proximity. And her sundress. Oh, and definitely her thighs. But mostly that bewitching smile and its uncanny power to make him forget the highly salient reasons why renting out his basement for sex—sex with _her_ —is a very, very bad idea.

As he tosses and turns, robbed of sleep, he briefly lets himself imagine it. Maybe he would go downstairs to her and take her from behind bent over one of those ridiculous leather barstools, her breathy moans urging him on as he bit down on her shoulder. Or she might come upstairs: knock on the front door, leave her sundress on the doormat, and stretch out on the couch, one heel hooked over its back in wanton invitation. He would bury his face into the crook of her neck as he buried his cock into her waiting heat, and her nails would scrape his back as he took her _there,_ over and over until she dissolved into a puddle of pleasure and come and whimpered “Ben”s.

Or so he imagines. He doesn’t let himself imagine for long, in part because he’s rock-hard but won’t take himself in hand because he doesn’t deserve any relief from contemplating the horrendous decision he made. But mostly because the mental image taunts him mercilessly: of Ben Solo, sex god, who could conceivably give a woman multiple orgasms.

It paints too vividly depressing a contrast to the bleak reality: of Ben Solo, virgin.

He doesn’t even have a dorm room fumble’s worth of experience, so picturing anything other than what would inevitably be a cringeworthy debacle with Rey feels dishonest, even in the secrecy of his own head. He waits for his erection to subside, then rolls over and tries to sleep. He has no success until about four a.m., once he’s resolved to email Rey first thing in the morning to undo his error. He’ll tell her she can still move in, of course—she shouldn’t suffer because of _his_ idiocy—but sex doesn’t need to be part of the deal, after all. She’ll probably be relieved.

It’s a great plan, except that when he drags himself out of bed a few hours later he hasn’t even had time to make coffee, let alone compose an email, when his phone rings. When he sees her name on the screen he answers instinctively before he can think better of it.

“Hello?” He wishes his voice didn’t sound like he just woke up.

“Hi, Ben? It’s Rey. Sorry, did I call too early?” It should be insufferable, how chipper she sounds. So why is he so crazy about it?

“No, no, this is fine. Great,” he says, his voice like a bag of gravel being dragged along a sidewalk.

“I just wanted to see if it’s okay if I move in on the twentieth? Our lease goes through the end of the month, but I can borrow a car on the twentieth to move my stuff. Would that be okay for you?” There’s a slightly anxious tinge to her voice, like she thinks he might’ve changed his mind. Like she doesn’t expect people to agree to the things that she asks for.

“Of course,” Ben answers swiftly. “The twentieth is perfect.” He doesn’t know what day of the week it is, but any day that she wants to move into his house is a perfect day.

“Great,” she smiles. “Thanks again, Ben. I’m really looking forward to it.”

He doesn’t know why anyone would particularly look forward to the process of moving, generally accepted as one of the greatest trials of humankind, but if that’s what she’s into, he’s all for it. He replies, “Me too.”

“Okay, I need to get to work, but I just wanted to call. To check. Thanks, Ben.”

“Thank _you,”_ he responds earnestly. Then comes a _literal_ face palm. If he just goes back to sleep, all of this may have been a bad dream and he can wake up and do it right.

“Have a good day!” There’s a smile in her voice. She’s probably trying not to laugh at him.

“You too,” he grits out, then hurriedly taps his phone to end the call before he can make even more of a fool of himself.

This is...not ideal. He didn’t accomplish the one thing he intended to. He puts the coffee on and checks when the twentieth is. It’s a Sunday. He doesn’t put in his calendar that that’s the day she’s moving in. He’s in absolutely no danger of forgetting.

In the intervening week and a half, Ben drafts and deletes a couple dozen texts and emails. He can’t think of a good way to say, _Hey, remember how you offered me sex? In the unlikely event that you haven’t thought better of it since then, I want to be clear that I don’t want it. That is, there’s nothing I want more, but sex with a thirty-year-old virgin isn’t something that you should be subjected to. Because you should always have the best of everything._ Okay, he wouldn’t put _all_ of that in an email, but even the first part never seems to come out right. So by the time the twentieth rolls around, he still hasn’t told her. He’ll just do it person, when she arrives.

It’ll be easier that way. Right?

She texts him that morning to let him know that she’ll be by with her stuff that afternoon around three. The text ends with a little winking face blowing a kiss. He wonders if she usually concludes texts that way. He starts to sweat.

A beat-up car pulls up a few minutes after three, which Ben is instantly aware of thanks to the fact that he’s been watching out the window for half an hour.

The driver—a twenty-something guy Ben takes an immediate, irrational dislike to—gets out, and Rey clambers out of the passenger seat, laden with a beat-up old duffel bag that’s coming apart at the seams. That’s not what Ben notices first, though: it’s her cutoff jean shorts, which could have been designed for the express purpose of torturing him. Because there are her thighs again, and he forgets how to think. As she struggles with the duffel it finally occurs to him that he should go help. He dashes out the door and flies down the porch stairs, just in time to catch an armful of clothes as they fall.

“Ben!” she exclaims. “Thank you _so_ much, this dumb bag...” She succeeds in gathering the rest of the bag’s contents, cradling the whole load in both arms in front of her.

“Of course, it’s no problem,” Ben answers, a bit dazed. “You’re...here.”

“I’m here!” she repeats cheerily. Some strands of hair have fallen out of the bun perched jauntily on the top of her head, and she’s flushed and sweaty but radiant. “I can’t thank you enough, Ben, really...oh! This is my coworker Poe, he offered to help me move my stuff because he’s the _best,”_ she throws over her shoulder as Poe approaches, “and because he’s basically the only person I know who owns a car.”

“But _mostly_ because I’m the best,” he announces with an easy grin. Ben’s baseless dislike intensifies. Poe is at least half a head shorter than him but carries himself with an assurance and ease that Ben could only dream of. “It’s good to meet you, man,” Poe says, extending his hand to Ben. “I wanted to make sure that our Rey wasn’t moving in with some creep.”

 _Clearly you haven’t heard about our arrangement,_ Ben thinks ruefully. _I am some creep._ He shifts the clothes he’s holding enough to shake Poe’s hand, quickly retracting it to stop something soft and lacy on the top of the pile from falling. “Hi, I’m Ben.”

“Poe, can you grab the plastic bags from the trunk first,” Rey cuts in, shifting the duffel bag impatiently. Poe springs to obey, and Ben leads the way around the back of the house to the basement door. Fortunately he had the presence of mind to leave the door unlocked, so he only needs to spare a hand for long enough to turn the handle. He leads the way in, pushing the door open with one shoulder, and Rey follows right behind, letting the duffel drop as soon as she’s inside. She breathes a sigh of relief and wipes her forehead with the back of her wrist, and Ben tries not to look at the rivulet of sweat tracing its way along the midline of her chest. Tries not to think about its ultimate destination. He looks away from her, down at the armful of clothes he’s still holding, and he goes over to the couch and gingerly sets them down on one cushion. He gets a good look for the first time as he does so, and as he does he realizes that it’s not just the one that happened to have lace. That one is red with red lace, but there’s a kind of silky champagne-colored garment trimmed with lace too. And a black number without lace, but with mesh panels that he realizes probably aren’t intended for public viewing. He’s been holding her _lingerie._

He steps back instinctively as if burned. “Oh sorry, I didn’t...”

“Hmm?” Rey is at the kitchen sink, wetting a paper towel. “What’s wrong?” She walks over, pressing the towel to her cheeks.

“I didn’t know...I didn’t mean to look at your...” Ben gestures to the pile and feels his face turning as red as the lace.

She glances down at the silken heap, then back up at him. “It’s no problem,” she says nonchalantly. “It’s not like you won’t see them eventually, right?”

_Jesus Christ._

It’s exceedingly fortunate that the question seems to have been rhetorical, because Rey turns around and starts familiarizing herself with the layout of the little kitchen, leaving Ben to his involuntary erection. He mumbles an incoherent excuse and dashes to the bathroom, locking the door behind him. He turns the water on as cold as it will go and cups it in both hands to splash on his face. He douses himself again and again, until he’s dripping but at least his dick has mostly settled. He dries his hands and face with the hand towel—making a mental note to bring down a clean one for Rey—and looks up at himself in the mirror. The overhead light makes it look like he has dark circles under his eyes, or maybe he really does and he’s never noticed. Maybe he just developed them in the past three minutes, since he fully recognized how much of a catastrophic mistake this was. He’s been reduced to hiding in the bathroom of his own house.

At least they don’t seem to have noticed him missing, or don’t mind if they did: he hears Rey’s voice and Poe’s as they carry things in. She’s going to _live_ here. In _this_ house. Eternally a flight of stairs away: her and her thighs and her lingerie. _It’s not like you won’t see them eventually, right?_

Ben takes a deep breath, steels himself, and lets himself out of the bathroom. Rey isn’t there, but Poe is, setting down some paper grocery bags that seem like they have toiletries in them, judging by the shampoo peeking out of the top. “This is a great place,” he says approvingly. “You’ve rented it out before?”

“No,” Ben says shortly.

Undeterred, Poe continues, “This house must have a hefty mortgage, though.”

“It’s paid off.”

Rey comes in with another armload as Poe presses on. “You earn a lot, huh? To have the mortgage paid off already?”

“Poe!” Rey snaps, in a tone that Ben thinks would leave anyone in the world chastened except Poe, apparently.

“It belonged to my grandparents,” Ben says.

“They left it to you, huh?” Poe prods.

“They left it to my parents.”

“Oh, do they live here too?”

“They’re dead.”

An awkward silence descends. Ben seizes the opportunity to say to Rey, “I’ll be upstairs if you need anything.”

He leaves by the back door but barely gets ten steps before her voice comes from behind him: “I’m sorry, for Poe. I mean, I’m sorry, about your parents. I’m just...sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Ben says and means it.

“No, it’s not,” she insists, walking toward him. “I can imagine that it might’ve hurt, to have to say it like that, to a stranger.”

“It didn’t.”

“Was it...” she hesitates, “a long time ago?”

“No. But it’s fine.”

“Ben,” she says, stepping closer. “This isn’t how I wanted this to go. I wanted you to like me, and now I feel like I’ve already gotten off on the wrong foot.”

“I _do_ like you.”

“I want to be a good tenant.”

“You _are_ a good tenant.” She raises her eyebrows incredulously, and he can’t suppress a grin. “I mean, I’m sure you will be.”

“I will,” she says, with a kind of emphatic determination that he doesn’t quite understand, like she’s making a promise to herself.

“Rey?”

“Yeah?”

“I hope you like it here.”

“I do.” She smiles up at him. He’d very much like to kiss her.

“I’ll be upstairs,” he says, gesturing vaguely toward the house.

“Okay,” she says, still smiling, and he can’t be sure but he thinks she stands there for a little while longer, watching him walk around to the side yard toward the front door.

He goes inside and shuts the door. He leans with his back against it. He can do this. This is fine. She’ll be downstairs, he’ll be upstairs. His life can go on just like before. Despite her and her smile and her lingerie. _Shit._

He tidies the already tidy kitchen and living room and replays the last half hour, trying to figure out just how bad it went. There’s nothing that comes to mind that immediately makes him wish he’d never been born, so on the whole, it wasn’t awful. He’s pretty sure she didn’t notice his erection. The fact that he stayed in the bathroom for ten minutes wasn’t great, he concedes, but it was infinitely preferable to subjecting her to his tented crotch. He told her he liked her. That’s okay. She probably just thought he meant as a casual friend-acquaintance. He told her he was sure she’d be a good tenant.

But _then_ he realizes exactly what she thought he meant by that. What she thinks being a good tenant requires of her.

And then he said he’d be upstairs...

She thinks he asked her to come upstairs for sex.

There’s a knock on the door.

_Oh, fuck._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So THAT happened... 👀
> 
> I post occasional status updates on my [Twitter](https://twitter.com/CeliaAnd2); feel free to come see.
> 
> I feel guilty that I didn't have the chance to respond to most of your gorgeous comments on the first chapter, but know that each one made me _so_ stinkin' happy. I hope to reply to most going forward! 💛


	3. Tense

He’s just going to say it. He’ll just rip the Band-aid off and tell her, and then the worst will be over.

He walks to the door, grips the handle, steels himself, and blurts out as he opens it: “I don’t want to have sex with you.”

Poe is standing on the doorstep, _very_ confused. “Uh, I didn’t think you did?”

“Sorry,” Ben trips out, face flushing. “I thought you were someone else. My...neighbor.”

“Your neighbor comes over often, to ask for sex?” Poe asks skeptically.

“Um, yeah. All the time. It’s getting annoying.” Ben rubs the back of his neck, hoping the heat of the afternoon sufficiently justifies how red his face must be. “Anyway, what can I do for you? Does Rey need something?”

“No,” Poe says slowly, clearly debating whether to let the neighbor sex thing go. He apparently decides to move on. “Rey’s all set. I wanted to come apologize. For, you know, the whole dead parent thing. It was shitty of me.”

“It’s fine.”

“No, man, I’m sorry. It wasn’t cool.”

“Really, it’s not a problem,” Ben insists.

“Okay. So...yeah. Anyway. If it’s all good, I’m just gonna go...”

Ben cuts in. “Did Rey ask you to apologize to me?”

“Well, yeah. I mean, not that I wouldn’t have otherwise,” Poe hastens to add, “but yeah. She really wants this to work out, her living here.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

“Okay then. I’m gonna head out.” Poe turns to leave, and only makes it a couple steps before he turns around. “Hey, Ben?”

“Yeah?” Ben pauses in closing the door.

“Rey is...she’s good people. And she’s had it rough, you know? I just...want this to be good, for her.”

“Me too.” The sincerity must show on Ben’s face, because Poe seems satisfied.

“Great. Thanks, man. And sorry again. Good luck with the whole neighbor situation.”

“Neighbor?”

“Uh yeah, the one who keeps bothering you? Sounds rough.”

“Oh, _that_ neighbor. I have a lot of neighbors, so I forgot for a second which one... Okay. Thanks. Bye.” Ben shuts the door hurriedly.

As soon as the door is closed his phone chimes a text alert, and Ben is pretty sure at this point that he will never, ever have a moment of peace again in his life. It’s from Rey:

> Hey, I’m gonna take a quick shower and get pizza delivery for dinner. What toppings do you like? My treat! 😊

He wants to say, _Don’t feel like I expect you to have dinner with me. Thinking that you need to have sex with me is bad enough—you shouldn’t feel like you need to spend time with me too._ But Ben is exhausted and he’s not good at these things, these _people_ things. And he doesn’t know how to tell her any of the things that he needs to say and she deserves to know. So instead he types:

> Pepperoni

Her text in reply is nearly instantaneous:

> Perfect! Your place or mine? 😘

_Sexual frustration:_ that’s what they’ll list as his cause of death.

> Mine

She replies with one word:

> Great!

It’s _not_ great. None of this is great. But he’s committed, now.

At least this time, when he hears a knock on the door half an hour later, he can be reasonably sure that it’s not Poe. He takes a deep breath and opens the door. His eyes immediately snap down to Rey’s chest, and he forces them up with supreme willpower. She’s changed into a white tank top, and the material is thin enough to make it very clear that there’s no bra beneath. She’s also wearing the same cutoff shorts as earlier, and a smile.

“I feel like a new woman!” she exults. “Your shower downstairs is _so_ nice, with that pulsing massage setting.”

“Great!” Ben grits out. “I’m glad you could get...clean. Please, come in.” He steps back to let her inside, and she slides off her flip flops. Her toenails are painted red.

Ben gulps. “Can I get you something to drink?”

“Oh thanks, anything cold that you have is great!” As he goes through the doorway to the kitchen he hears her continue, “The delivery app says the pizza is five minutes away, I hope you’re hungry!”

“Definitely,” Ben replies, trying to hide the strain in his voice. He pours two glasses of iced tea over ice and comes out to the living area. Rey is over by the dining room table, which he’d set with plates, forks, knives, and cloth napkins while he was waiting for her. She doesn’t see him, and reaches out slowly to touch just the corner of one of the precisely folded napkins. He stands with the glasses chilling his hands and watches her. Her finger is hesitant, tentative, as it traces the edge of the napkin.

One of the ice cubes betrays him, shifting with a soft clinking sound that makes Rey look up and notice him. She snatches her hand back as if he’d caught her doing something she shouldn’t.

She gestures at the meticulously prepared table. “You didn’t need to...I mean, this is too much.” She seems upset. Ben messed up, already, and he doesn’t even know how.

“It’s nothing.”

“It’s _not_ nothing.” He can’t tell if it’s a trick of the evening light or if there are tears in her eyes.

“I hope you like iced tea,” he says, walking over and holding out a glass to her. She takes it silently, not looking up at him. He retreats, setting his glass down on the table and going over to the couch to plump an already-plumped cushion.

He watches surreptitiously out of the corner of his eye as she stands sipping her iced tea. He’d made it the day before, following instructions he found online. He'd gone to a tea shop and asked for their recommendation on the best kind of leaf for iced tea. The salesperson seemed knowledgeable. Ben hopes she likes it.

A knock at the door cuts the silence, and Ben hastens to answer it. A twenty-something guy asks, “Rey?” and barely waits for Ben’s nod before thrusting the pizza box into his hands. She’d already paid online, obviously, which was a disappointment because Ben had palmed a twenty, hoping to beat her to the payment.

He shuts the door with his foot and turns back toward the table, where Rey seems to have gathered herself.

She smiles brightly. “I’m starved. There’s nothing like moving to take it out of you.”

Ben nods his agreement, joins her at the table, and sets the box down on the trivet he’d readied. Rey sits down, eagerly opens the lid, and grabs a couple of slices. Ben follows suit. The pizza does look kind of silly on the plates, he realizes. Pizza is more of a coffee table food. And he doesn’t know what he was thinking with the forks and knives, and the cloth napkins. _Of course_ it was too much, she must think he’s ridiculous.

His train of thought is abruptly halted before the self-flagellation can get fully underway, as Rey takes a bite and moans her satisfaction. Ben feels his ears start to heat and shoves his own pizza in his mouth as a distraction.

Rey swallows, sets her slice down, and carefully slides her fork to one side so she can pick up her napkin. She unfolds it partway, wipes her mouth, and sets it in her lap, where she smooths it with one hand. Ben watches her and feels slightly better. _She’s using the napkin. At least that part wasn’t ridiculous._

“So, pepperoni, huh? Your tastes haven’t changed much since you were a kid?” she asks, playfully teasing.

“I haven’t really had pizza since then,” Ben admits.

“What do you mean, you haven’t had pizza since then?” She’s aghast. “Not at _all?”_

“It’s always seemed like a food you’re supposed to eat with other people. So living alone, I don’t order it.” He winces internally. _Nice one, now she knows you have no friends._

“Well now you have me, so you can,” she answers matter-of-factly, taking a bite. “How is it?” she asks with her mouth full.

He takes another bite, to really taste it as he chews. He swallows and answers, “It’s pretty good. The pepperoni doesn’t taste like I remember.”

“We can get something different next time. So you can make new taste memories,” she says, eyes twinkling.

He hums an okay, and for a while the only sounds are chewing and the clink of ice cubes as they drink. The sun has dipped low enough that it slants in the side window, bathing the room in an orange glow. Rey wipes her mouth again with the napkin. Ben feels a knot in the region of his chest loosen slightly. Once in a while Rey makes a little comment about the pizza or the tea—something that he can reply to easily—and then they lapse back into a companionable silence. She helps herself to another piece, and so does he, until between the two of them they’ve finished the pizza.

When the last crumbs are gone, Rey wipes her mouth once more, sets the napkin back beside her plate, and leans back in her chair. She smiles and hums a contented hum of satiation. The sunset paints one side of her face pink.

“That was just what I needed,” she says, lightly rubbing her stomach as she closes her eyes and tilts her head to rest against the back of the chair. Ben watches, transfixed, but too soon she raises her head and opens her eyes. “Now let’s take care of what _you_ need.” She stands and walks around the table toward him. He turns in her direction automatically as she approaches. She smiles down at him and touches his mouth with the fingers of one hand. His lips automatically part for her. She bends down and places a lingering kiss right at the corner of his mouth. He trembles as she stands back up and then he watches, breathless, as she kneels down in front of him. His brain is frozen, until she reaches out toward his crotch and his hand automatically grabs her wrist to stop her.

She looks up quizzically. His mind races. What was he supposed to say? Had he come up with the perfect words, and is just forgetting them now? Had he decided to wing it? What would’ve possibly made him think he could formulate a thought, with her kneeling in front of him? What are words, anyway? “I have to be up early tomorrow morning.” It comes out in a fevered rush.

“Okay?” She’s waiting for the point.

“I have this thing, that I have to do, that I need to be up early for. So I think you shouldn’t... I mean we shouldn’t... I mean, not tonight.”

“Oh,” she says, getting back to her feet. “No problem, Ben.” Her knees are red where they bore her weight on the hardwood floor. He hates himself for that. “I’ll go get some more unpacking done. Or maybe just go to bed and unpack in the morning.” She barely stifles a yawn.

“You should get some rest.”

“I will.” She stands there for another minute, looking down into his face as he looks up at her. He can’t read her expression. “I liked having dinner with you.”

“Me too,” he answers fervently.

She smiles and makes her way over to the door where her flip flops await. Ben stands and follows. She slides her feet into them and turns back to him. “Thank you for letting me stay here.”

“Of course,” he says gruffly.

“I really appreciate it. A lot, Ben.” She looks up at him with a kind of beseeching expression.

“I’m happy you’re here,” he says quietly.

“You are?”

He doesn’t understand why she’d care about reassurance from _him,_ of all people. “Yes.”

“Okay.” She searches his face. “Good night, Ben.”

“Good night.”

He opens the door for her. There are fireflies gathering on the lawn. She looks back, once, from the bottom of the porch steps. The house-light brushes her face in the dusk. She smiles at him. And for one single moment all is right with Ben’s world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My darlings, thank you for your patience! 💛 I've been writing this somewhat out of order, because a while back I was inspired to write some smut but now I have to fill in what happens in the meantime. 👀 I upped the chapter count because who am I kidding, this is going to take at least six.
> 
> Thank you for reading, I appreciate you!


	4. Burned

The room feels empty after she goes downstairs. It shouldn’t feel any different than any other evening that Ben spends alone. But the physical evidence is there: the empty pizza box. The napkin that wiped her mouth. The lingering tingle where her lips touched his.

He cleans up and sets an early alarm, to stick to the story he’d given her. He’ll go sit in a coffee shop for a couple hours to get out of the house. She doesn’t need to know.

She doesn’t need to know how pathetic he is, how much he _craves_ touch. When her fingers traced his lips, he was aroused, of course. But her touch stirred a deeper realization. In the few seconds that she lent it to him, he learned that he would do anything to have it given freely. And as long as he has the power over her housing, she can never truly give it without another motive. She needs a place to live. He needs to keep her safe. So he has to learn to do without her.

Sleep doesn’t come easily: thwarted by the knowledge that she’s _here_. Under the exact same roof as him.

And for the first time since he can remember, there are two plates in the drying rack.

* * *

The next day, after his crack-of-dawn coffee shop visit, he goes grocery shopping. On the off chance that she ever wants to have dinner with him again, he won’t let her pay for takeout. So he bypasses the frozen meals and instead ventures down aisles he never has. He gets things like olive oil and all-purpose flour and pesto. He buys one each of the fresh herbs rather than the dried because there are too many dried options to choose from. He gets delicate little potatoes and glossy organic bell peppers and yellow onion, though he doesn’t know the difference from white. He trusts his fate to the butcher at the deli counter and in the end, comes away with what he hopes is a respectable batch of ingredients. He wipes dust off unused shelves in the pantry to store it all, fills the fridge, and starts researching recipes online.

He’s so engrossed in following along with a YouTube video showing the proper way to cut onions that the knife slips and he almost slices his finger when the phone rings. It’s her. He dries his hands perfunctorily on his pants and answers.

“Hi.”

“Hey, Ben! How was your thing this morning?”

“Oh, yeah. Good. It was good.”

“That’s great! Listen, I’m getting settled in, but you should come down for dinner tonight, if you want to.”

He doesn’t answer right away, so she continues.

“Or later, after dinner. Either way is fine with me.”

He hates how casually she offers. He wonders if she’s ever had to use sex as currency before, and immediately wishes that thought had never occurred to him.

“No,” he says quickly. “You should— you can come up here, again. I’m cooking.”

“Oh.” She doesn’t sound entirely pleased. “You don’t need to, Ben.”

“I’m trying something new. It might be awful. You would really be doing _me_ the favor, by agreeing to try it.” He holds his breath as he waits for her response.

“Fine,” she finally says. “Thank you, I mean. What time?”

“Seven?”

“Great,” she smiles. “See you then!”

“Bye, Rey.”

This cooking thing had better work out.

* * *

He doesn’t attempt anything too ambitious: just roasted asparagus with new potatoes and salmon. He puts half a loaf of French bread in the oven too.

It’s not all ready at the same time. He supposes that’s something that experienced cooks know to plan for. When she arrives, the overdone salmon is rapidly cooling while the asparagus merrily browns and the potatoes stubbornly refuse to attain that state of fork-flaking tenderness that the recipe describes. He quickly lets Rey in with instructions to make herself at home, then dashes back to the kitchen to try to salvage the bread, which he’d forgotten about and is charred on one side. In his desperation he considers scrapping the whole thing and ordering takeout, but he promised her a home-cooked meal, and a home-cooked meal she’ll get. He manages to cut off the burned part of the bread, and the rest doesn’t look too bad once he has it on serving plates. He garnishes the fish with some herbs he grabs at random. It looks intentional. He hopes the potatoes aren’t unbearably underdone.

When he comes out to the dining room with his first load of serving dishes, Rey is perched stiffly on the edge of the couch. He’s never seen her at home, granted, but he can’t imagine this is how she looks there. She’s uncomfortable around him. Of _course_ she is. He should’ve agreed to go down to her like she asked. He screwed up yet again.

He sets the serving plates down on the table and returns for the rest. He checks the spread and doesn’t think he’s forgotten anything. The butter for the bread is still mostly hard, but it’s too late to do anything about that.

Rey takes a seat in the same chair as last night, and as Ben sits down too he gets a good look at her. She’s wearing makeup, and a blue dress with lace sleeves. Her hair is down. She looks like she’s on a date. He swallows hard and says, “Sorry in advance for the food. It may be inedible.”

She smiles tentatively. “It’s okay.”

“No, I mean it,” he presses on. “Don’t feel like you have to be polite if it’s terrible. I’ll throw it in the trash right now and call the pizza place.”

“We haven’t even really established that you actually like pizza.”

“That doesn’t matter. _You_ like it.”

“Ben. However bad it is, I promise you, I’ve had worse.” She catches herself, like she said more than she wanted to. “Let’s just eat, okay?” It comes out with the barest hint of a sharp edge.

He serves for both of them, silently. Chastened. He prays that even if it doesn’t taste great at least it won’t give her food poisoning.

He watches her unfold her napkin and put it back in her lap. Because it is _her_ napkin, now. It belongs with her. If she changed her mind and decided to move out tomorrow, he’d have to slip it in her bags to take with her. Right after he begged her not to leave him.

She looks tired, he thinks. The makeup does a good job of hiding it, but there’s a droop to her eyes that wasn’t there before. She chooses to take a bite of potato first, and Ben curses his luck. But she chews and swallows without complaint and goes for the salmon. He relaxes, slightly. When he takes a bite himself, he’s pleasantly surprised that the potato tastes very much like potato. The asparagus is a little over-salted but the salmon is perfectly serviceable, despite being barely lukewarm. He isn’t a complete failure after all.

Rey eats mechanically, without engaging. There’s none of that golden glow of yesterday. They could be strangers who happen to be sitting at the same table, today. Which they _are,_ of course. Maybe yesterday was a fluke. He got way too far ahead of himself. Maybe he should’ve just bought his frozen dinners instead.

They eat their meals in silence. She looks smaller than he remembers: diminished. Curled ever so slightly in on herself. Ben aches with the need to do something or say something to make it better. But he doesn’t know what, because he doesn’t know _her._ She finishes, wipes her mouth, and sets her napkin down on the table. She stands, and so does he, out of instinct. She comes silently around the table to him and musters a smile that doesn’t reach her eyes. He’s so busy thinking how sad she looks that it takes him a minute to stop her when she starts to untuck his shirt.

“Hey.” He stills her hands, trapping them where they lie against his abdomen. “What’s wrong?”

She looks up and tries to smile but bursts into tears instead. He doesn’t know what to do. He takes a hesitant half-step forward and to his relief, she closes the rest of the gap. She folds her arms into her chest and muffles her sobs in his shirt. He doesn’t even have to think about what to do. His arms automatically wrap around her: not stroking, just holding. Her tears soak through his shirt. No one has ever entrusted their tears to him before.

Too soon, her sobs quiet and she pulls away, wiping her face with the back of her hand. Her makeup is smeared in all directions. Ben asks, “Do you want to sit on the couch?”

She nods and goes over while he runs to the kitchen for a glass of water and a wet towel. When he comes out, she’s curled into the corner of the couch with her legs tucked underneath her. He kneels down in front of her and offers the water. She wordlessly takes a few gulps and hands the glass back to him in trade for the towel. She scrubs at her face, chuckling wetly when she sees the makeup that rubs off. When she hands it back to him he doesn’t leave, just sets the glass and towel down on the coffee table and stays on one knee.

“Do you want to talk about it?” he asks.

She looks uncertain for a minute, but then bursts out, “He was my family, you know? And he left me. He chose someone else over me.”

“He’s an idiot,” Ben answers fervently.

“No he’s not,” Rey retorts sharply, then catches herself and chuckles ruefully. “He’s really not,” she says earnestly, “it’s just that this is the first time I’ve lived without him since I’ve been an adult. It’s kind of rough.”

“I’m sorry,” Ben says sincerely. His knee is starting to complain about the hard floor, but he makes no move to ease it.

She smiles at him—her first smile of the evening. He didn’t even realize how much he’d missed it. “No _I’m_ sorry. I meant this to be a nice night, and you cooked for me, and now I’ve ruined it. I even wore this dumb dress because I thought...” She doesn’t say what she thought. In the silence that follows, something in the air between them shifts, and he realizes that her face is exactly on the same level as his. Her gaze moves down to his lips and her tongue darts out to draw her bottom lip into her mouth. It emerges glistening. He stays stock-still as she leans forward. Her hand falls on his shoulder and for some reason he looks over at it, so her lips meet his cheekbone.

She pulls back just enough to say “Ben,” quietly, like she’s trying out the feel of his name in her mouth. Then her hand moves to grip the front of his shirt and pull him to her for a real kiss, full on his mouth. It’s fire. It’s too hot, too bright; it burns. She doesn’t want him; she wants her family. This isn’t how it’s supposed to be.

When he pulls away she tries to follow and he has to say, “Rey. You don’t want this.”

“I _do.”_ Her hands latch onto his shirt, to keep him from leaving her entirely.

“You’re upset.”

“I don’t care.” She doesn’t meet his eyes, just looks somewhere in the region of his Adam’s apple and tugs on his shirt, trying to bring him back to her.

“Yes, you do. Rey.” He waits until she finally meets his gaze. “You care a lot.”

“I know.” Now she deflates. Her hands fall from his chest, and she lets herself be as tired as she is. He tenderly takes her face in both hands and gently bends it down so he can place a kiss on her forehead.

She gives him one more weary smile before she leaves.

It’s only then that the memory floods back of another man kissing the forehead of another woman as a boy watched unseen from the hall.

* * *

She’s resilient; she recovers quickly, or at least pretends well enough that he’s fooled.

She’s so vitally alive. Her presence increased the number of people in the house by 100%, but it increased the _life_ by about 1000%. They start having dinner together most days. He keeps using that same ridiculous excuse, in that moment that quivers with possibility at the end of each evening. “I have to be up early tomorrow.”

He starts going to the gym before work instead of after. It gives him an alibi and lets him devote his evenings to learning to cook. He tries baking too, and likes that better. More precise. Less margin for error, but at least there are rules to follow. He needs something in his life that plays by the rules, because her sensuality is chaotic and overwhelming. After he offers that lame excuse, she always answers, “I’ll be up for another hour or so, if you change your mind. Just come down.”

That hour after she goes downstairs is always the hardest. He fears that the temptation will be too much for him one day: to go knock on her door and take what she offers. He thinks about how soon he could conceivably be inside her. It’s probably a twenty second walk from the front door around the side yard to the basement—twelve if he jogs. Two seconds to knock on the door. It might take her fifteen to open it. One second to take her in his arms, maybe twenty to pull off her clothes in between kisses. Three to back her up against the wall. Two to pull his pants down. Four to pick her up, one arm cradling each tan thigh. And one to thrust home.

From any single moment in that nighttime hour, he is never more than one minute from being inside her, if he wants.

And it’s _torture_.

She’s taken enthusiastically to yard work, maybe as a way to try to repay him since he’s not taking the other form of payment (he always feels abjectly guilty when he thinks about that possibility) or maybe as a new form of torture—one that takes the form of a bikini top and jean shorts molded to her curves. With her arm muscles and abs tensed to push the lawnmower, she’s the living embodiment of a wet dream. Sweat trickles down the shallow valley between her breasts and suggests other fluids that could find a home there too. It’s almost indecent how alluring she is. A mother walking down the sidewalk with her young son ostentatiously covers his eyes. A teenaged boy biking by narrowly misses crashing into a parked car. Rey acknowledges all passersby with a blinding smile. Ben watches surreptitiously through the window and wonders if it’s possible to have one’s sexual awakening at the age of thirty.  
  
This would’ve been so much easier if she’d moved in in the winter: no cutoff shorts or yellow bikini tops that make him yearn to examine the tan lines. But then she comes upstairs for dinner sometimes in a baggy tee shirt and old basketball shorts and he still can’t take his eyes off her.  
  
Oh, who is he kidding. The season doesn’t matter. She could probably make snow boots and a parka sexy.

He doesn’t see much of a pattern to the evenings when she dresses like she’s trying to seduce him and those when she doesn’t. Sometimes she comes up in thin cotton dresses in Easter egg colors that shouldn’t be as sensual as they are. But the mint green or the pale yellow set off the tan of her skin and make him want, achingly. He tries not to let her see.

He doesn’t let her help with dishes. She complains, at first: “You cook for me, you can at least let me clean up.”

But he draws the line at making her work in his house, especially when doing things for her is his greatest pleasure. He realizes his mistake early on. Instead of relaxing in the living room or chatting with him leaning against the kitchen doorway—the things a guest who wasn’t actively trying to seduce him might do—Rey opts for a front-row seat to the washing of the dishes. On the counter, beside the sink. He has to keep his elbow tucked in so as not to touch her thigh. Her bare feet dangle easily, sometimes arching against the cabinet door below, and he tries not to think about the curve of her foot in his hand. Or her toes in his mouth.

One night as he scrubs a bowl clean he confesses, “I don’t even remember why I listed the basement for rent in the first place.”

“Oh, I know why,” she volleys, with a calm self-assurance.

“What? How can you, if I don’t know myself?”

“It’s obvious,” she answers matter-of-factly.

“Fine, then tell me.”

She smiles slyly. “Nope.”

“What do you mean, nope?” he asks, jokingly incredulous.

“Just what I say. I’m not gonna tell you,” she sasses.

“Why not?” He barely resists the urge to flick suds at her.

“I can’t tell you that either,” she refuses playfully.

“Okay then, if I guess, will you tell me if I’m right?”

She thinks seriously for a minute. “Fine. But! You don’t get unlimited guesses. Only one per evening.”

“That’s fair.” He thinks as he turns the water on to start rinsing the washed dishes. “Okay, is it because I was drinking?”

“No,” she grins. “Well, I don’t know if you were drinking, but that’s not why you did it.”

“How do you know?” he protests.

“It’s very, very obvious, Ben,” she grins.

“What if I don’t figure it out?”

“You’ll just have to keep me around, I guess,” she banters, but then her mood shifts suddenly. She’s uncharacteristically timid as she asks, “You _will_ keep me around, right?”

He looks at her for a moment, perched on his counter. “Of course I will. Rey. Of _course.”_

She’s mollified for a time.

She still makes her habitual advance, before she leaves.

And he still lies to her, and sets his early alarm. And tosses and turns in his bed trying his best not to think of her where she waits, only a minute away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For some reason my brain flatly refuses to write this story in order, so I keep ending up with material for future chapters, but that doesn’t help with the one at hand! Thanks again for your patience with me, I dearly hope you’re enjoying this little story of mine! 💛


	5. Close

It’s one of the many quirks of the old house: the fact that the door at the top of the stairs to the basement was jammed shut at some point. Whether it was from shoddy construction, the foundation settling, a minor earthquake forgotten by history, or some other cause, no one still alive knows. Instead of being repaired, it was painted over—just part of the wall. A denial of the connection between upstairs and down.

As a boy, Ben harbored a secret fancy that on the other side of the closed-off door lay some kind of Narnian fantasy world. He made it a game to touch the door on the main level, then run around the side of the house to the basement and race up the stairs to the other side as fast as he could. He didn’t know from which side the portal might open, but he always wanted to surprise it in the act. Even after he outgrew childish make-believe, it always held a certain mystique for him. Not a door, and not a wall. A paradox.

Of course, when he passes by that doorway lately, he no longer suspects that an impossible fantasy lies on the other side. Now he _knows_ it does.

Because that’s where Rey is.

* * *

She’s maddening. She continues to refuse to tell him the answer she claims to have, of why he listed the basement for rent. His nightly guesses get more and more outlandish.

“I thought it was a waste to let that space be vacant.”

“Maybe that too, but it’s not the main reason.”

And the next night:

“I’m secretly afraid of the dark and wanted someone in shouting distance.”

She laughs. “Maybe that too, but it’s not the main reason.”

And the next:

“I have a suspicion that the house is haunted, and I wanted another witness to the ghost.”

Her chortle bubbles out richly. “Actually, probably that too, but it’s not the main reason.”

He does truly want to know. Maybe she’ll tell him, one day. But in the meantime she gives him her laughter and he revels in it.

* * *

She texts him one Saturday afternoon to say that her washer isn’t working and to ask him to come down. He promptly rounds the house and knocks on her door. She answers in a white cotton robe that manages to be alluring despite covering her from her neck to her knees. He supposes he should feel lucky. She could’ve opted to wear...something else.

“It’s so weird,” she says. “The machine turns on, but the water doesn’t come out. I don’t know what could be the matter with it.”

“I’ll call a plumber,” Ben says, pulling his phone from his pocket.

“Oh no, don’t do that. I’m sure it’s not necessary,” Rey says confidently, beckoning him over to the washer.

“You...are?” Ben is confused.

“I don’t know, I have the feeling it’s an easy fix.”

“Well you’re more handy with this sort of thing than I am, so if you can’t figure it out...”

“Just take a look,” Rey insists.

Ben does, leaning in to examine the washer. Nothing _looks_ wrong with it, but he doesn’t know how these things work. He’s not a plumber. He pushes the button to start it, and sure enough, the machine springs to life but no water fills it. He looks at the wall next to the washer, where the water control spigot is. Just on the hunch that it might’ve gotten turned, he tries the knob. He has to turn it a full rotation, and the metal resists, but finally the water pours out.

“You were right,” Ben says, glancing in the machine to make sure it’s filling correctly. “It was an easy fix. The water was turned off for some reason.”

“Huh,” Rey says from behind him. “I must’ve brushed against it by accident.”

“I don’t think just _brushing_ would do it,” Ben says, turning around. “It’s—” The rest of the sentence, whatever it was going to be, flies out of his head.

She’s taken the robe off.

“I forgot!” she exclaims. “I wanted to throw this in with that load too.”

He wordlessly steps aside to let her drop the robe in and emphatically close the washer door.

She turns to face him. Ben’s brain is paralyzed by strategic silk triangles held precariously together by scraps of lace, but not by that so much as the _skin._ The lingerie gets to touch her and he doesn’t, and of all the injustices he’s experienced in his life, somehow this feels the most unfair. By _far._

He finally realizes that he’s just standing there, staring at her mostly-bare body, and with effort brings his eyes back up to her face. He expects to see a seductive smirk, but instead there’s a soft, hopeful smile that makes everything worse. She takes a step toward him. He gulps.

She presses up on her tiptoes and brings her hands up to rest gently on his shoulders. He doesn’t bend down to meet her, so instead she presses the ghost of a kiss to his jaw. He stands rigid and immobile as she presses an open-mouthed kiss to the side of his neck, then another, and a burning trail of them. She lightly scrapes her teeth over his skin and he forgets how to breathe.

Beside them, the washer finishes filling and clunks on to the next cycle, breaking Ben’s trance. He leaps away and blurts out, “I have a chicken in the oven!”

He practically runs back to his front door. His cock is aching, but before he can do anything about it, he needs to put a chicken in the oven. He seasons it haphazardly, rubbing some random blend of seasoning quickly into its skin before hurriedly sliding the pan in the oven and turning it on. He doesn’t even properly wash his hands, just quickly rinses off some herb—maybe thyme?—and dries them perfunctorily so he can pull out his straining cock. He doesn’t leave the kitchen; he holds onto the counter where she sits and brings himself off with the other hand, with furious punishing strokes. He closes his eyes and thrusts again and again into his clenching fist, imagining _her_ hand, and her cunt, covered by the barest whisper of green silk. Just a tug, and the lace would give way for him. _She_ would give way for him. His knees buckle, and he comes with a garbled shout.

He cleans his come off the cabinet, after, and when she comes upstairs for dinner an hour later the chicken is ready, and she’s wearing a loose-fitting tee shirt over capris.

She doesn’t say anything about what happened, and neither does he. She’s a little quieter than usual. She might just be tired.

* * *

It dawns on him one day: that he wants her just as much either way. Baggy tee-shirts or lingerie. But something else has changed about the wanting, too, something more profound. He no longer wants her on the kitchen counter or on the couch or bent over that table where she eats the food that his hands make.

She makes him want upstairs things.

He wants her hair splayed on his pillow. He wants his sheets to know her skin. He wants her mornings, too, not just her nights. He wants to buy a new bed and put it in the vacant master bedroom and make love to her there, in her rightful place, because she is the mistress of his house.

The new knowledge brings a bittersweet joy: the realization that now he knows what love feels like, even if he can’t have it returned. Because the more he cares for her, the more he needs to keep her safe from the world’s ills, cocooned in that basement apartment. If he can’t have her upstairs, it’s the next best thing.

* * *

He never knew that conversation could be so easy. If it’s an art, she has it mastered. She sometimes jumps from topic to topic or falls silent for a while, but it’s never awkward or uncomfortable. Something about her nudges him into telling her things that he’s surprised not to regret having said. Sometimes she tells him things in return, and sometimes she’s doesn’t. It’s okay. He’ll take whatever she chooses to give him.

It’s easier when he’s washing dishes and doesn’t have to look at her, to say the things. They finish eating right before dusk, when the light starts to go, but they don’t turn on the overhead light in the kitchen, they just borrow secondhand rays from the dining room.

“I don’t remember much of my grandfather,” he admits one night, elbow-deep in a soapy pot. “Just this house.”

She’s sitting on the counter, in a peach-colored linen dress that he’s successfully avoided looking at, for the most part. “How old were you when they died?”

“My grandmother died before I was born. My grandfather, I’m not sure. I think maybe I was five or six. I remember hating the suit I had to wear for the funeral.”

“And then your parents lived here too?”

“Yeah, we moved in after my grandfather died. My dad wanted to sell it, but it was a sentimental thing for my mom: to live in her childhood home.”

“What was your favorite thing about the house when you were little?” she asks, leaning back against her hands.

“The closet in my room. It had a door to a smaller closet inside.” It’s almost too dark to see if he’s missing spots on the pot, but neither of them makes a move to turn the light on.

“Do you still sleep there?”

“No,” he says. “It didn’t feel right after I moved back here, after they died.”

“Do you sleep in your parents’ old room?”

“No, that felt wrong too.” The hot water runs smoothly over his hands as he rinses. “I took what used to be the guest room.”

“Does that feel right?”

“I don’t know,” he says honestly, slotting the serving spoons into the drying rack. “It’s fine.”

“Just fine?” she asks in a quiet voice.

He puts the last pot on the rack and dries his hands on the dishtowel on the oven handle. “I was fine. I think. Though that doesn’t explain why I decided to post that rental listing.”

“Well, let me know when you figure it out. I think you’re getting closer,” she says airily, feigning a sudden interest in her fingernails.

“I have ways of making you talk, you know,” he growls, and her face lights up gleefully. He finally succumbs and switches on the light, the better to interrogate her by. They both squint at the sudden glare. He advances on her where she’s still perched on the counter, stopping at arm’s length.

“Oh yeah?” she goads. “Like what?”

“Well, for starters...” his hands shoot out to grab her sides, intending to tickle her. But instead they fall flush against the curve of her waist. Acting on instinct, he yanks her forward, sliding her toward the edge of the counter, and her knees part for him so his bulk slots between her thighs. Her eyes widen, and his do too. He surprised even himself. But before he can think better of it and back away, she grabs his shirt with one fist. She’s so close that their breath entangles. He can see the exact color of her irises where they recede around yawning pupils. He blesses the fact that he turned the light on.

“Ben,” she pleads, still holding onto his shirt. His hands haven’t left her sides. Her dress is rucked up around her hips. She carefully leans forward—to kiss his cheek, he thinks. But her lips barely brush it and continue to his ear.

She whispers, “Want me.” Just that.

It’s enough.

Enough for him to remember why this is a bad idea, why he put up those carefully-cultivated boundaries in the first place. She lets go of his shirt to press a hand to his other cheek and cradle his face against hers, though, and he forgets for just a minute.

“I do.”

He can hear the quiet hitch of her breath by his ear, even though he can’t see her face, pressed as it is against his. He could pick her up like this, and she could wrap those torturous legs around him and he could carry her upstairs to his bed. He could lay her down and push her dress the rest of the way up and lave his tongue over her breasts. He could be inside her, actually put a part of himself _inside_ her body.

But then he thinks about an email from a woman desperate not to be homeless and instead he pulls back and says, “I need to be up early.”

She lets out a wild half-cry, half-laugh of frustration. She collects herself, slides down from the counter, and turns away from him as she adjusts her dress.

She stands there for another minute, facing away from him. He clenches his fists at his sides, wishing he had the words to tell her. About the wanting, and the care, and the aching fear. But he doesn’t.

 _She_ has words, though, and when she turns around and flings them at him it’s a new kind of devastating.

“I’ll start paying rent.”

“No,” he shoots back vehemently.

“You obviously don’t want...what we agreed on, so I’ll start giving you money. I know I can’t pay market rate, but I’ll do as much as I can.”

He’s heard each of these words thousands of times before, so why should they cause actual physical pain, just because they happen to be arrayed in this particular order and come from her mouth? “Don’t. Please don’t.” He advances without thinking, reaching out for her hand. She snatches it away. “Why can’t we go on like we have?”

“I don’t need your _charity,_ ” she spits.

“It’s not charity.”

“What do you call it, then? Let someone live in your $3,000-a-month apartment, don’t let her pay rent, and cook her dinner every night? For nothing, _nothing_ in return.”

“It’s not nothing. It’s _you._ You’re not nothing, Rey.”

She’s looking up at him with a wide-eyed hurt that he doesn’t understand, and he would give anything in the world if she would let him take it from her, so he could bear it instead. He reaches out slowly, and this time she doesn’t pull away. He brings his hand up to rest against her cheek. She melts into it. Ben lets himself think that everything might be okay after all.

But then she stiffens and pulls back resolutely. She walks out of the kitchen and out the front door, but first she says the words that cut the sharpest of all:

“Sorry for taking up so much of your time. I know you need to be up early.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *whispers* I’m so sorry. 😬


	6. Wet

He regrets everything.

He thinks back to all the things he should have told her, that built up and up to a mountain of unsaid words between them that’s too high to climb now.

If he’d told just told her _I don’t want you to feel obligated to have sex with me,_ he could’ve said _But I think you’re beautiful._ Then he could’ve said _I look forward all day to spending my evening with you,_ and then _Nothing makes me happier than watching you eat the food I cook._ Then he could’ve said _I love taking care of you,_ and _You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me._

_I care about you more than I care about myself._

_You’re everything._

_Please stay._

But it’s too late now to try to chip away at that insurmountable mountain, he thinks, and who knows if she’d still be waiting on the other side.

He doesn’t sleep that night. The next morning, after he gets up with his needlessly early alarm and leaves the house, he finds an envelope taped to the front door. Inside is a check from Rey, with no note. He thinks he might be sick.

He spends the whole day at work trying to think of the perfect words to say, to tell her what she means to him. They don’t come. She doesn’t text him to make dinner plans, so he stays at the office late. Not working, just brooding. It feels less pathetic at his desk than in his empty living room.

When he finally gets home after ten, it’s starting to rain. He pours himself a glass of scotch, plops down on the couch, and downs it. He pulls out his laptop and goes to his email. He opens her first message, the one that made him start to care about her in the first place. And as he reads it, he realizes how monumentally stupid he’s been.

The answer has been staring him in the face the whole time.

He pulls out his phone and texts her. Just three words. And then he waits.

> _You’re my person._

* * *

He’s dozed off on the couch when he’s awoken by a banging on the front door. He jumps up and sees that it’s past midnight. He goes hesitantly to the door and looks out the peephole to see Rey in the pouring rain. Just then, blinding lightning cuts the sky, followed almost immediately by a particularly deafening peal of thunder that rattles the windows. He hurriedly fumbles with the lock and pulls the door open. She’s wearing an old tee shirt and pajama pants, both of which are rapidly being soaked.

“Jesus, Rey, come in!” He has to raise his voice to be heard over the rain.

“No, I need to ask you something,” she says resolutely. The rain starts to blow inside, wetting the doormat and Ben’s bare feet.

“Can you come inside and ask me here?”

“No.”

“Okay.”

She seems to be steeling herself for whatever it is, and Ben doesn’t rush her, just lets his feet get wet and watches as the rain aggressively plasters her hair to her head.

“Okay,” she says. “Here’s what I need to ask you.” She takes a deep breath, and the words rush out: “When you said I’m your person, did you mean in the way that Finn was my person? Was that your way of telling me you’re not attracted to me?”

“What?”

“I SAID,” she repeats, yelling over the rush of rain, “ARE YOU NOT ATTRACTED...”

“No, no, I _heard_ you, I just...Rey. Come inside, please.”

She stands for a minute, considering. Another clap of thunder makes them both jump. “ _Fine_.”

She scurries inside and he closes the door behind. She stands, dripping, on the doormat and wastes no time before asking again, “So?”

“Of course I find you attractive,” he answers before thinking. “You’re fucking gorgeous.”

She’s only slightly mollified. “Okay, but you don’t want to have sex with me?”

“No. _Yes_. No.”

Befuddled, she asks, “Which one?”

“I don’t want you to feel like you have to sleep with me out of obligation, because you don’t owe me anything. And trading sex for housing is really kind of a fucked up situation, when you think about it, because what if you don’t feel like it but you think you have to or you’ll be evicted?”

“I...Have I given the impression that I don’t sincerely want to have sex with you? Because I do.”

She’s the one who’s soaked, but he’s the one who shivers. “No, you really don’t.”

“I think I can be trusted to know my own mind, Ben!” she snaps, crossing her arms across her chest.

“You might think you do, but you don’t. Because I couldn’t make it good for you.”

“What?”

“ _That’s_ why I don’t want to have sex with you, Rey. Because I want you so much, _so_ badly, but it’s better to just want you forever than to disappoint you.”

“I don’t understand, Ben.” She’s almost crying, now, in sheer frustration. “Why do you think we wouldn’t make it good, together?”

“Because I’m...because I’m a virgin, okay?! _There._ Now you know. Feel free to laugh.”

She stills. “You...you’re... _that’s_ why?”

Words won’t come, past the lump in his throat. He nods.

“Oh Ben, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize...” She reaches out for his arm. He flinches away. “I’m so, so sorry if I made you uncomfortable.”

“It’s fine,” he grunts out. “You can go now.” She’s done her worst. The spell is broken; she knows the truth. He’ll forever be an object of pity for her, now, and it chafes unbearably. He successfully pretended for a while that he could be a _someone_ to her, but it was too good to last. He turns to go upstairs. She can let herself out.

“Go? Why?”

He turns back to look at her. “What do you mean?”

“You want me to go, because you’re a virgin?”

“ _You_ want to go, because I’m a virgin.”

“You’re wrong.” She stands her ground in a growing puddle.

“Rey, we both know that you could have anyone, you’re obviously not going to waste your time teaching a thirty-year-old man how to have sex.”

“Why not?” she shoots back.

“Because...because that would be ridiculous. _I’m_ ridiculous.”

“You’re not.” She looks ready to fight anyone who would dare to suggest it.

“I don’t want your pity.”

“Pity? You think I feel _pity_ for you?” she scoffs.

“Of course, I’m pathetic!” he bursts out. “I found a woman almost a _decade_ younger than me to live in my fucking _basement_ in exchange for sex!”

 _“I’m_ the one who proposed it!” she retorts. “And I’m an adult too! I don’t know why you don’t think I can make my own decisions!”

“I _do,_ of course, I do! But I tricked you into thinking I’m...” He sighs and quiets. “...something I’m not. I’m sorry.”

“I don’t feel tricked,” she answers, quietly and evenly.

“You should.”

“I don’t.” She watches him for a minute, arms still wrapped around herself. “I feel like I want to have sex with you.”

“No, Rey,” he protests, “you...” He trails off when she lowers her arms to her sides. His eyes try valiantly but they can’t help it: can’t help traveling down to where her nipples stand at peaks plainly visible through the wet shirt. _It’s_ _the A/C,_ he reminds himself. _It’s just because she’s cold._

“Does it look to you like I don’t, Ben?”

“No, I mean, I know the air conditioning is on, and you’re all wet...”

She scoffs incredulously. “Are you seriously mansplaining my nipples to me right now?”

“No, of course not, but...”

“You think because I’m ‘all wet’...” She suddenly trails off. She seems to be thinking. Finally she slips her flip flops off and squelches over to him, leaving a trail of drips. “If I can prove to you that I’m turned on right now, will you believe me?”

He gulps but doesn’t answer.

“Will you, Ben?” she murmurs, reaching out with both of her hands for one of his where it hangs at his side. She wraps one of her hands around his pointer finger and the other around his pinky, bringing his hand up between them so he can see. He looks down at her fingers wrapped around his, and as he watches, she brings his hand to her abdomen, to lay it flat over the fabric of her drenched tee-shirt. He can feel her warmth through the shirt and the rain between them. Never letting go of him, she slides his hand down slowly, guiding him, letting him touch her without having to know how. It’s only when his thumb nudges the waistband of her pajama pants that she lets go of his hand with one of hers, to slowly slide up the hem of her shirt out from under his hand. She brings it to her navel and it stays there, plastered against its own soaked fabric. Now his hand rests against her skin, and he could just stay here without ever asking her for more because she’s so warm and vital and _alive_ under his palm. But she has other plans.

She uses the hand that raised her shirt to slip under the waistband of her pants, pulling it away from her to leave a gap for something to go through. Like his hand. With the hand that still holds his, she slowly guides him down, down, down until he can’t see his fingers anymore, blocked as they are from view by her pants. Soon he can’t see his whole hand, but he forgets all about sight when his fingertips feel new, achingly smooth, hot skin. She guides his fingers along her folds, helping him between them, where she’s hot and slick with a wetness thicker than water. She guides him even farther down, until his hand is all the way between her legs and his middle finger touches the source of all the wet.

Up until now she’s been entirely in control of the situation, but when his fingertip brushes her hole there’s an almost imperceptible intake of breath. He looks at her in awe. It’s that gasp—more than her hardened nipples, more than the viscous wetness—that convinces him.

He asks it quietly, loath to break the spell: “You want me?”

“Do you believe me now?” she asks, voice trembling a little as she rubs his finger back and forth across her opening, letting just the tip dip in with each pass. “You feel how wet I am for you, Ben?”

At first he thinks it’s a rhetorical question, but she’s waiting for his answer. He nods, just once.

“Good. _Good,_ Ben.” It sounds like she’s praising him for something, and he doesn’t deserve it, he’s not doing anything but let her guide his hand back and forth. Back and forth. “I’m _always_ this wet for you.” She looks at him. “Do you believe that?”

He silently nods again, lost in her.

“Good. I need you to believe it. I need you to believe me. Because I need you to know how much I want you, Ben. It doesn’t matter what you did or didn’t do, before. I want you now. I want _you._ ” As she speaks, the hand that’s not on his between her legs travels up his chest, to his shoulder, finally to cup the nape of his neck. “Before I kiss you, I need you to say it.”

He tries to speak, but it comes out in the barest whisper. He tries again. “You want me.”

“Good, Ben, say it again.” Her eyelids flutter closed like it’s his words caressing her and not his finger.

“You want me.”

“Good, good,” she murmurs. “Good, Ben.”

He lives for this; he would die for this. She keeps guiding his finger, never getting faster, just letting herself feel with her eyes closed. But then she opens them, slowly and lazily, and smiles a sleepy smile. She guides his hand up, past the waistband, and his fingers are cold without her heat. But he forgets that—he forgets _everything_ —when her mouth presses to his.

There’s a deeply buried instinct that comes out now. It’s like his lips and his tongue were taught this eons ago by some ancestral genetic code, but they forgot until _she_ happened. Because when her lips part against his, he follows suit without having to think. He can just feel: feel the slide of her tongue against his, and the soft vibrations from her moan, and the wet length of her front pressed flush against him. His arms gather her into him, and he’s holding her whole self but still he wants _more._ He wants to burrow under her skin or let her nestle inside of his and then _maybe_ he would start to feel as close to her as he needs.

She’s the first to break the kiss, and she pulls back just enough to smile at him and touch his wet lips with gentle fingertips. “Say it again,” she murmurs.

He’ll say literally anything she wants. “Which part?”

“I’m your person.” She says it slightly uncertainly: halfway between a statement and a question.

“You’re my person.” He tries to kiss her again, but she pulls back.

“You want to know something?”

“Everything. I want to know everything.”

“You’re my person, too.” She says it seriously, watching his face carefully for a reaction.

He’s surprised into letting go of her. _“Me?”_

“Of course, you.” She smiles again, but this time with gathering tears. She leans into him, to kiss him, but this time he’s the one who pulls back.

“Really?” he asks, incredulous.

“Why wouldn’t you be my person?”

“I don’t...I didn’t know I could mean that much, to you. I’m not Finn.”

“No,” she says fiercely, as a tear falls out. “You’re not Finn. You’re better. Because I want to spend time with you, and eat food with you, and tell you things, _and_ have sex with you.”

“Oh, Rey.” He grasps her sides with shaking hands. This kiss tastes different than the last: partly because of the tears, but more because of something new and fragile and too precious to name.

She cradles his cheek in her hand, like she did last night in the kitchen, but this time he doesn’t even think of resisting as she kisses down his cheek to his jaw. And now, she looks at him and she asks, “Do you want to have sex with me, Ben? Tonight?”

His breath catches. “Yes.”

“Good. Where?”

He smiles with his heart on his lips. “Upstairs.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, this is a crazy world we’re living in, and I’m so glad you’ve joined my Ben and Rey in their safe and happy home. I appreciate your comments more than I can say, and I’ll do my best to reply to all of them, but please know how deeply happy they make me.
> 
> I don’t yet know when the next and final chapter will be ready, but it means so very much to me that you’re reading my story. I [tweet](https://twitter.com/celiaand2) progress updates sometimes if you’d like to come check. I look forward to giving these darlings their happy ending. ❤️


	7. Home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Huge thanks once again to [@reylographer](https://twitter.com/reylographer) and [@cxmmonplaces](https://twitter.com/cxmmonplaces), respectively, for these gorgeous moodboards! 💛

She laces her fingers in his and leads him out into the hall, toward the stairs, where she’s never been. She lets go of his hand to climb the stairs, and he’s a few steps behind her. She reaches the top before he does, and he calls out, “Wait.”

“What’s the matter?” she says, turning back to look down at him where he’s paused in his climb.

He looks at her standing at the top of the stairs, and nothing in the world is wrong. “Nothing. Just... wait a minute?”

She looks concerned. “Is this too fast? Do you not want to?”

He huffs an incredulous laugh. “I want everything.” He wants to freeze this moment and live in it. But after a beat he advances, because the only thing better than this moment might be what comes after. She’s still waiting for him quizzically when he reaches the second to last step, where their faces are almost exactly level. He’s close enough to kiss her, but he doesn’t, he just runs his hands up her arms to her wet tee-shirt. She shivers.

“You’re cold.”

“A little.” Her teeth don’t quite fully chatter, but her chin quivers.

“Do you want to take a shower? I can lend you some warm clothes?”

She takes a couple steps back, far enough that he has a perfect view as she hooks her fingers in the hem of her shirt and slowly peels it off. The wet fabric resists leaving her skin. Ben can’t blame it. She pulls it over her head and lets it fall with a wet slap where she stands. Her pebbled nipples beg for his mouth.

“You’ll just have to warm me up.” It’s the kind of thing that should sound silly, like something out of cheesy porn, but the way that she says it—low and earnest, with eyes that beckon—there’s nothing further from his mind than laughter. She quickly rids herself of her wet pajama pants too, leaving them in a sodden heap on the hardwood floor by her shirt.

“Is it okay?” she asks quickly as she stands up, and Ben doesn’t know how to tell her how insufficient the word _okay_ is to describe the sight of her, naked, standing in his upstairs hallway, but then she clarifies: “I mean, I didn’t know if you wanted to undress me? It’s your first time, and I don’t know if maybe that was important to you?”

Ben’s heart fills to overflowing. If he didn’t already know he was in love with this woman, _this_ would be the exact second he realized it, as she stood bare and shivering and waiting for him and all the while trying to think of how to make his first time special. “It’s perfect,” he answers gruffly. “You’re perfect.”

She smiles softly and holds out a hand to him, and only then does he mount that last step. Now he leads her down the hall past the empty rooms inhabited only by memories to his bedroom. He doesn’t turn on the overhead light, but goes to the bedside table and flicks on the lamp there. She stopped at the foot of the bed. The warm yellow glow of the lamp bathes her body in gold, painting wide swaths that give way to alluring shadow. It pools in puddles in her collarbones and creeps around her sides and gathers in the junction of her thighs. In that place that his hand knows, but his eyes don’t, yet.

The house breathes around them, and everything is silent. It could be a hundred years ago. They could be generations old, and just home from their wedding. He could be looking at his naked wife for the first time, in the way that his father’s father and his father looked at their wives in this house. Nothing could be more right than this.

He realizes belatedly that he’s still standing, staring, with a hand resting on the lamp. He hasn’t made any move to take his own clothes off, or warm her up, or do anything but look. He’s doing this wrong, he thinks. He should’ve kissed her already, or taken his clothes off, or done _something_. What if she thinks he doesn’t want her, and he’s messed it all up?

She must see it on his face, because she slowly climbs onto the bed and crawls over to where he stands near the head. Not in a seductive way: just to get to him. She kneels on the mattress when she reaches him, and she takes his face in her hands and she kisses his chin and his mouth and she whispers, “You’re doing so well, Ben. You’re going to be so good. Do you want to know a secret?”

He nods tremulously, arms hanging at his sides.

“You don’t have to do anything, and you’d still make it good for me. You could just undress and lie down and I could get on top of you. You wouldn’t have to do a single thing, and I know for a fact that you’d make me come anyway.”

“I just...” his throat is dry. “I want to make you happy.”

“Well then you don’t need to worry.” She smiles. “You already do.”

Her smile in the lamplight is the invitation he needs, to stop thinking and start kissing her. He wraps his arms around her, partly to warm her and partly because he _can,_ he’s allowed to hold her in just her skin. He claims her lips again, or maybe she claims his, but it doesn’t really matter because his lips belong to her anyway. Finally she moans into his mouth and impatiently plucks at his shirt, and that’s his cue to pull away just far enough to rid himself of his clothes with as little ceremony as she deposited hers in the hallway. He gathers her back into his embrace, and with so much of his skin against so much of hers it’s a lot—bordering on too much—but with Rey and her body and the way she gasps when he touches her, _everything_ is too much, but also essential.

She’s still kneeling on the bed as he stands by it. They’re pressed so closely that he knows she must feel his erection nudging her insistently. He’s irrationally embarrassed for a second, until her hand runs down over his pec to his abdomen and then grasps his cock at the base. He lets out an involuntary puff of breath, and she stretches up to kiss his forehead as she slowly draws her hand up to the tip, then back down again. “So big,” she whispers. “You’re going to feel incredible inside me, Ben.”

He whimpers. He’s not proud of it, but he can’t bring himself to be ashamed, not when her hand is doing _that_ and her words crawl inside his ears and curl up contentedly. _I always want you. So big. You’re my person, too._

“What do you think, Ben?” she murmurs in his ear. “Do you want me to be on top the first time?”

 _The first time_. It shoots a thrill down his spine, and not just the mental image of his cock disappearing into her as she bobs on top of him. But a first time hints at the promise of a second time, and then a third time, and even a hundredth time, and maybe enough times that one day he stops keeping count. And it doesn’t matter if he doesn’t know what he’s doing the first time, because he’ll be better the second. And the third. And the hundredth. And she’ll stay. She’ll be there for the hundredth, so the first time doesn’t have to be perfect.

His eyes fill with tears. She’s noticed, because of _course_ she’s noticed. “You can tell me, Ben. It’s okay.”

“I...” he doesn’t know how to say it, how to convey exactly how momentous this is. How momentous _they_ are, this pair of bodies and souls in the old house. He cups her cheek in one hand. She clasps hers over his and watches him with eyes that heal. “You’re _here._ ”

“Just don’t leave me, okay?” She asks it quietly, like a favor, looking not quite at his eyes.

For the first time that night, he’s the one who can give _her_ the reassurance she wants. And now the right words are finally there when he wants them. “Rey,” he says. “I love you. I won’t leave.” It’s simpler than he thought. The words come easily. That’s what he’s been trying to say all along, really. “I love you.”

One day they’ll come upstairs, shedding clothes and laughing, warm and full from dinner, blundering down the hall because they can’t keep their hands off each other and they keep stopping every few feet to press the other one against the wall and kiss them. One day they’ll tumble into bed already tangled in each other and when she sinks down onto him, he’ll grin and she’ll laugh with the sheer joy of it. One day they’ll give each other their feelings in words as presents and he won’t need to cry for them, and neither will she.

But not tonight. Tonight, she cries. He sees the exact moment when her face crumples and the first sob forces its way out of her throat. He holds her. He’ll always hold her, and he tells her so.

He tells her that he needs her and that she’s everything and that he loves her. He tells her that he’ll never, ever leave. He tells her that she’s home. He doesn’t know if she hears it all between the sobs, so he tells her all over again.

She cries until her sobs quiet and slow, and then he kisses the top of her head and pulls back the corner of the covers. He gently guides her down until she’s lying in his bed facing away from him, cocooned in his sheets, and then he flips off the light and slides in after her and wraps himself around her. She’s drawn her knees in to her chest, so he gathers her shins to him too and cradles all of her against his bare chest. He kisses her wet hair, and _this_ is what he needed to start to feel close enough to her. Because he can feel her chest expand as she breathes. He can feel her heartbeat. He hears the residual small snuffling sobs. He feels her body relax as she slips into slumber.

He follows her.

* * *

He jolts awake, disoriented. His too-early alarm is blaring. He goes to roll over and turn it off, but his arm is trapped under something warm and grumbling.

 _Rey_ is in his bed. Fuck the alarm.

He rolls back toward her instead and wraps his other arm around her too. The one pinned underneath her stomach is asleep, but that’s okay. He’d sacrifice any number of limbs for her. He kisses her bare shoulder as she tries to burrow deeper in the pillow, to block out the alarm. His hand against her side tickles her as she squirms, and she finally relents, laughing, and turns over to face him. She pushes against his chest. “Turn it off!”

He needs to kiss her properly before he does anything else, and she allows it for a few seconds before her lips turn up in a smile and she starts nudging him again. He finally relents and rolls away just long enough to slap the alarm off, then immediately comes back to her. They lie on their sides facing each other. Her hair is a mess. His probably is too. The first rays of sun peek in at the window. He smiles with his whole soul. “Hi.”

She smiles softly, almost shyly. “Hi.”

No part of them is touching, now, but Ben is acutely aware of their nakedness. “You’re in my bed.”

“I’m in your bed,” she agrees. Then she realizes something, and it makes her sit bolt upright, clutching the sheet to her chest. “Ben! We didn’t have sex last night!”

“I know,” he says, reaching out to lazily stroke her bare arm.

“But you love me!”

“I know that too,” he grins. The sun has started to spill in, and it lands on her.

She bends down: to lie back down next to him, he thinks, but instead she nudges him onto his back and props herself up with both elbows on either side of his head, half-lying on top of him. “You love me,” she accuses, smiling.

His hands find her back. “I know.”

She kisses his nose, just a peck. “Say it.”

“I love you.”

She kisses his cheek. “Good.”

“Rey, I love...”

She doesn’t let him finish, because she’s kissing him for real this time, with a mouth that promises a lifetime. She weaves her fingers through his hair and holds on, as he holds onto her. The bed is an ocean, and he’s her raft. She climbs on top truly, now, with her knees planted on either side of him and her apex pressed against his abdomen. One of his hands moves down with barely any permission from him to cup her ass, then it strays to the bottom of her upper thigh and finally cups around to brush her cunt. She moans at the contact, and he pulls his finger away and finds it wet.

“I told you,” she breaks the kiss long enough to say. She smiles against his lips. “I’m always wet for you, Ben.”

Then all the interminable weeks of wanting catch up to him and he can’t go one more moment without being inside her. But he doesn’t have to ask, because she’s already scooting down and bringing one hand down between them to align his cock at her entrance and notch it just inside.

She says, “Look.” He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to be looking at, and he doesn’t know if he can spare any looking power from all the _feeling_ he’s doing right now, but she glances down between them and he understands. He looks at her pink lips splitting around his cock, and he watches as she slowly slides down, enveloping him. “Look, Ben,” she repeats, and he’s looking—he’s looking. “You did it. You did it, Ben.” She plants a kiss on his collarbone. “You’re doing so well.”

He’s so wrapped up in the sensation of the wet hot vise around his cock that it takes him a few seconds to realize that she’s trembling. “Are you okay?” he asks in a voice that he didn’t mean to come out quite so breathless and strangled.

“Big,” she gasps. “You’re so big. Inside me.”

His cock jerks at that, or would if it weren’t being gripped so tightly by her pussy, but he forces himself to say, “Is it too much? Do you want to stop?”

She fixes him with the most incredulous look he’s ever seen on another human’s face before. “Never.”

Some instinct leads him to plant his feet flat on the bed, which gives him leverage to thrust up into her. Not all the way, just shallow intrusions, but enough to make her moan and clutch at the sheet, and with the way her cunt is spasming he doesn’t know if he’ll be able to tell when she has an orgasm, because if he’d had to guess beforehand he would’ve said this would be exactly what it felt like. He isn’t going to last very long, he knows already, but still he presses on with those small thrusts that get a bit deeper each time.

“Ben,” she says in a choked voice, looking him straight in the eyes, and there’s an unraveled wildness there that he’s never seen before. “Please.”

Anything—anything—but “I don’t know what you want. You have to tell me. Tell me.” His thrusts never pause; he doesn’t know if he could still his pelvis now if he tried.

“Please.” She looks undone. “Ben. Gonna co—” she doesn’t even get the whole word out before it gives way to a sharp moan, and her muscles lock around him in earnest. He tries to hold off his own orgasm—tries with all his might, so he can watch her and feel her in his right mind—but it’s too much, and he comes suddenly, with an inelegant grunt. There’s just the barest moment of mourning, then, that he couldn’t make it last, but she smiles sleepily and lays down on top of him and he can feel the residual quivering of her legs against his, so what more can he possibly ask for?

“Good, Ben,” she breathes against his cheek where she lies, carding one hand softly through his hair. “You did so well. So good for me.”

He doesn’t know why tears prick the corner of his eyes, except that maybe he had built this up more and more with each passing year until it became something huge and seemingly insurmountable. Maybe he had convinced himself that there was some unattainable standard of perfection that he had to reach to be worthy of a sexual partner. But now there’s Rey, and he was inside her and he made her come with his own cock. But still he needs a little more reassurance, so he says, “Really?”

“You were...” she pauses to consider and scratches gentle circles on his scalp. “I don’t know how to say this. You made me come, just with your cock, the first time you ever had sex. But even if you hadn’t, even if you hadn’t lasted five seconds before you came, or you’d been hesitant or awkward, any of that still would’ve been perfect. Because it’s you.” She props herself up again on her elbows so she can meet his eyes. “Do you know what I mean?”

He thinks he does, a little, but he still wants to hear her say it again. “But I did it well?”

She smiles. “You did _so_ well.” She kisses his jaw and his cheek and his brow and his forehead and _oh,_ this is new, because like this her breasts brush against his chest, and they’ve had sex now but he still hasn’t touched her breasts. He cups them with both hands, which distracts her from kissing him, but he doesn’t mind too much because he caresses them and finds the softest, smoothest patch of skin in the curve just underneath where it was waiting for him. Her breath urges him on, and he ducks his head as she intuits his aim and slides up his body so his mouth can find one pebbled nipple while his hand continues to stroke and squeeze the other breast, reveling in its plush give. He sucks her whole areola into his mouth and lets it go with a wet pop, just long enough to switch to the other nipple. It mustn’t be neglected. The whole time she showers down a chorus of whispers on him, and he soaks them up like a sponge: _Yes. Oh, Ben. Like that. Mm hmm. Please. So good._

Paradoxically, the more praise she pours on him, the more he wants. He fills up with yearning until he can’t hold it anymore; he pins her to him with one tight arm and rolls them both over until he’s the one on top. His cock knows what he needs, and it’s wonderfully convenient that it needs the exact same thing, because he’s spreading her thighs and fumbling for her entrance with his still-wet cockhead. “Okay?” he asks her, just before he pushes in, and the look of surprise from his suddenly taking charge hasn’t left, but she nods and spreads her knees even wider for him and reaches up to brace herself against the headboard with both hands.

“Please fuck me, Ben.”

It’s the _please_ that does it, maybe, or the way her arms tense by her ears in preparation, but whatever it is, he doesn’t hesitate. He’s inside her in one stroke, and he never got this deep the first time, but she draws her knees up until they’re almost level with her shoulders. That changes the angle in a way he didn’t expect, but now he can go all the way in. He looks down in disbelief at the way he can’t see his cock, not even a little bit; he can only see her glistening folds pressed flush against him. He starts to thrust more erratically than he intended, but he doesn’t have any control left anymore. As he fucks into her it feels exactly the same as the last time, and entirely different. She tries to urge him on but soon the force of his thrusts deprives her of the power of speech, and her moans and grunts and pants do it for her. He has her entirely at his mercy, spread out underneath him.

He wonders if she knows he’s wrapped around her pinkie. He wonders how he’ll survive how much he loves her.

He buries his face in her neck and ruts into her fast and hard and desperately. He feels the vibrations of her throat as the pounding of his cock forces the air from her lungs. One of his arms gives out, and he rests on his elbow instead and uses his hand to reach up and hold onto her arm, gripping her tense muscles with bruising fingertips. Their mingled juices have long since coated his cock and dripped down to his balls in their abundance, and the slap of his skin against hers resounds with them. He doesn’t know if he’s supposed to make noise, but he can’t help it: he grunts into her neck again and again, interspersed with jagged breaths that mingle with her moans.

He loves it when she tells him how good she feels, but he fucking adores this: when she’s past the point of words, so her body tells him instead.

When her cunt seizes and stutters around him, he holds on long enough this time to watch her come apart. Her eyes go glassy and unfocused, and her lips part as an invisible puppet string tugs her up, flush against his body for a second. It’s only on the next thrust that she falls back and cries out, and the next one after that, shaking uncontrollably. She’s not herself for a moment, she’s bliss incarnate, and _he_ did that. He jerks into her once, twice, three times, and on the third time erupts inside her so deep that he thinks she’ll never be rid of it. He hopes she won’t.

As soon as it’s over, he’s seized with doubt. He rolls off her so as not to crush her, and lies instead on his side next to her. She stays on her back, chest heaving, knees slowly sinking down from where he left them at her shoulders. “Was that okay? Did I hurt you? Was it too rough? I’m sorry, I—”

“I love you,” she says abruptly, turning her head to face him.

He grins; he can’t help it. “I mean, I didn’t know I was _that_ good.”

She laughs: a delighted chortle that bubbles up from her chest. “You massive, gorgeous, ridiculous dummy. I love you.” She rolls onto her side to face him.

It comes out of his mouth before he can stop it: “Why?”

“You learned to cook for me.”

“I would do anything for you.”

She smiles. “I know. It’s convenient that the only thing I really want, you’re already doing.”

He wracks his brain to discover the supreme favor he’s bestowing unknowingly. “What am I doing?”

Before she answers, she scoots toward him so she can kiss him tenderly.

It’s almost a whisper, when her answer comes. “Loving me back.”

* * *

He doesn’t know how to cook breakfast: he’s only ever made dinner for her before. She sits on the counter in just his shirt and finds a YouTube video showing how to make French toast, but she won’t let him watch it. She insists on describing it to him with some commentary that he doesn’t think is in the video, though she swears it is—like how wide his shoulders are and how strong his thighs.

While he waits for the egg-soaked bread to cook, he grabs her bare feet to pull her to the edge of the counter and stands in between her knees and steals kisses. She wraps her legs around his middle and locks her ankles behind and tells him all the things she likes about his body. It’s such an intoxicatingly pleasant pastime that he almost lets the French toast burn, but fortunately he rescues it in time and even has the presence of mind to cut it into strips that he dumps on a plate to take upstairs with a bowl of warm syrup.

Just one plate, today, and one bowl. He thinks he might be _too_ happy; he aches with it.

Rey sprints a one-person race up the stairs ahead of him as he ascends with the food. She darts around the corner and tosses the shirt she was wearing back over the bannister. He gulps and has to focus on not tripping on the next step.

Once they’re back in their sea of sheets, he dunks each piece of toast in syrup and feeds it to her. She licks his fingers. He licks her cunt. The remnants of the syrup spill on the floor when her leg spasms and kicks the bowl off the bed as she comes for the third time in as many hours. They lie in a haze of sun-drunk Saturday and delirious love.

They nap for a while, then get up to eat again. When they’re finished they lie naked again with limbs entwined and she smiles and whispers in his ear and rubs her breasts against his chest and drapes her leg over his so she can guide him back inside, and his hips discover a lazy shallow pace that turns her giggles into gasps.

If there’s an inch of her skin he hasn’t touched by eight o’clock that evening, he’d be extremely surprised.

This is all he needs from life, ever: his bed and her and enough food to keep her satisfied.

He’s sitting half-propped up against the headboard with pillows squashed behind him, and he’s her pillow as she sits between his thighs and lies back against him. She’s playing with his hands, sometimes twining her fingers with his, sometimes comparing the size of her fingers to his, sometimes lazily sliding his palms across her stomach. She eventually stills and he thinks she might be dozing again, but she says, “You’ve figured it out, right?”

“Figured what out?” he asks, ducking slightly to kiss the top of her head.

“Why you posted the basement for rent.”

He hadn’t given it any thought, in truth, but once she brings it up he knows. The answer was sitting in the corner of his brain the whole time, waiting patiently for him to notice it. “I was lonely.”

“Mm hmm,” she agrees, grabbing his hands to wrap herself firmly in his arms.

“Rey?” he says quietly, after the space of a breath.

“Yeah?”

“Move in with me.”

He can sense her smile, though he can’t see it. “I already live here.”

“Move upstairs.”

“You do have a point,” she pretends to muse. “Then we could rent out the basement. As long as you promise not to fall in love with your tenant.”

He grins and tightens his arms around her. “I can’t make any guarantees.”

Minutes pass, and the sun slides to the ceiling, closer to setting. He can feel her going limp in his arms, but she rouses herself just enough to say, “Are you still lonely?”

“Never.”

“Good.” She slips ever closer to sleep. “Ben?”

“Mm hmm?”

Her voice is thick with drowsiness. “Maybe you could never leave me. Is that okay?”

“I’ll never leave you, Rey.”

He thinks she tries to say _good,_ but it comes out as a vague murmur instead.

She sleeps. He watches the sunset. The house settles.

He holds his heart in his arms.

He’ll be there when she wakes up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so we’ve come to the end, and the list of thousands of happy endings for these precious characters now has one more. Thank you for being here. ❤️
> 
> In the two months it’s taken me to write this, I’ve reached some incredible milestones. I’ve passed my four-month fiction writing anniversary with more than 20 fics and over 100,000 words, and my dear friend bound my words in [a book](https://twitter.com/reylographer/status/1259927203854331910), which I can’t even begin to wrap my head around. This fandom is a community of unbelievably loving, giving, creative people, and don’t let anyone ever tell you differently.
> 
> Up next for me:  
> 1) I have another current [work in progress](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24156421): come along if you’d like some more soft pining Ben and angst with a happy ending!  
> 2) Last month I wrote [an angsty, soft, accidental public orgasm fic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23691913), so this month I thought, hey, why not write an angsty, soft, accidental public orgasm fic? Not posted yet, but it’s coming up! 😊  
> 3) There’s a novel that’s been percolating in my brain for a while, and I think I’m going to see if it would like to come out.
> 
> I do much of my writing on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/CeliaAnd2) nowadays—I would love it if you came to visit!
> 
> Thank you, thank you, _thank you_ for all the love. My heart is very full. ❤️


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